Murder of Lee Rigby

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I think the whole House will thank the Prime Minister for the speed with which he has come to the House and for fact that he does so regularly. In his statement he said, “But the automated systems in the internet company concerned did not identify this exchange.” Therefore, it does not appear that there was a deliberate attempt by the internet provider not to provide the information. It seems that its systems were wrong. Has he found out why those systems did not work? I also think that he could say which company it was.

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think that saying which company it was would be right, because I do not want to give a running commentary on which companies are better than others at analysing this problem and reporting it to the Government, for what I would have thought were quite obvious reasons about the signal that that would send to people who want to do us harm. My understanding of what happened in this case is that the company discovered the exchange after the murder took place, when it was searching its systems, and it found out that one automatic shutdown of an account had not been, as it were, referred upwards. We think it is very important to discuss with that company what it is going to put in place to ensure that that does not happen again.